I tend to use them for fancy fittings where removing the fitting from the ceiling to access the terminals is impractical during testing.
He said the lighting circuit was on, not specifically the fitting he was testing at was onHe says switched on so I will guess the neutral live wire to earth. The line live switched wire to un-switched line live should be zero and to any other wire 230 volt.
I tend to use them for fancy fittings where removing the fitting from the ceiling to access the terminals is impractical during testing.